India wants European investment
January 29, 2013, 9:25 am

Indian finance minister Palaniappan Chidambaram will inaugurate a new promotion campaign in Frankfurt tomorrow to outline India’s favorable investment climate for Europe.

Chidambaram will attend a roadshow on investment opportunities in India hosted by Deutsche Bank and Barclays Bank in Germany’s financial centre and will hold discussions with leading representatives of European companies and institutional investors.

A free-trade agreement between India and the European Union has entered its final stage and negotiators “are looking at a possible conclusion” by spring, the Indian ambassador to the EU, Dinkar Khullar said.

According to official estimates, the Indian economy is expected to grow by 5.7 per cent in 2012-2013 and by 6.7 per cent in 2013-2014, but economic analysts forecast that growth for the current financial year will be around 5.5 per cent.

Last week, the Minister visited Hong Kong and Singapore and from Frankfurt he will leave for London to take part in similar promotion events there.

The minister would be looking to bolster investor confidence in the world’s fourth largest economy by singling out reform measures taken by the Indian government in the past months.

India has tried to further liberalise foreign investments in various sectors, including multi-brand retail, single brand retail, power trading exchanges, commodity exchanges, non-banking financial institutions, broadcasting and aviation.

There have been continuing efforts by the Indian government to implement economic reforms and to reduce fiscal deficit as well as by improvements in FDI inflows into the country and gains on the export front.

India is looking at a fiscal deficit target of 5.3 per cent of the GDP for the current year.

57 founding members, many of them prominent US allies, will sign into creation the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank on Monday, the first major global financial instrument independent from the Bretton Woods system.

Representatives of the countries will meet in Beijing on Monday to sign an agreement of the bank, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Thursday. All the five BRICS countries are also joining the new infrastructure investment bank.

The agreement on the $100 billion AIIB will then have to be ratified by the parliaments of the founding members, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said at a daily press briefing in Beijing.

The AIIB is also the first major multilateral development bank in a generation that provides an avenue for China to strengthen its presence in the world’s fastest-growing region.